Since 1.0.199: fishing, holidays and quests
A Desktop Pet That Knows Your Mac
Adopt a pixel pet that lives along the bottom of your screen. It wanders, naps and chases your cursor — and it reacts to what your Mac is actually doing: panting when the CPU is pegged, shivering when the battery is nearly flat, dancing when music plays. Part of Notchy.
It reads your Mac
Sweat drops when the CPU passes its hot threshold or macOS starts throttling. Shivering when you're unplugged and low. A happy moment when you plug in. Stillness while a Pomodoro runs. It sits and watches when a video plays and dances when music does — and hover it to hear why.
Look after it
Feed it, play with it, pat it, put it down for a nap. Food, energy and friendship meters fill and drain, and a daily care streak counts up with milestones from 3 days to 365.
23 companions, each with its own care
Cats and dogs from a Siamese to a Samoyed, plus a capybara, a pygmy hippo, a rabbit, a frog, a fox, a hamster and a panda — eleven of them new in 1.0.197. Each adopted pet keeps its own levels and, with Personalities on, comes to love the kind of care you give most.
Collect and share
Every breed has a 1-in-50 shiny, rolled the first time you adopt it. Sixteen hidden discoveries show only as cryptic hints until you earn them, and seasonal hats turn up only in October and December. Share any moment as a card.
Games, window rides and bedtime
Play fetch across the desktop or a memory game on the pet's card. Now and then it climbs onto a window's title bar and rides along when you drag it, wanders over to visit your other display, and curls up to sleep late at night. Each of these starts off.
52 illustrated characters
Animals, people and robots — an astronaut, a wizard, a red panda, a toaster — that turn to watch your cursor and pull a face when you pat them. Plus fur colours, weather reactions (an umbrella in the rain), a memory book of your moments together and a Quick Paws reaction game (1.0.198).
Fishing, holidays, growing up and daily quests
Added in 1.0.199: cast a line from the care card and strike when the bobber dips, celebrate your pet's birthday and holidays, watch it grow from small as days and care add up, and finish three daily quests for treats you can spend on hats. Each starts off.
Tilt your Mac to play
On Apple silicon MacBooks, tilt the Mac and the pet slides toward the low side. It uses the built-in motion sensor, only while the pet is visible.
Polite about resources
The animation, timers and motion sensor all stop when the display sleeps or the screen locks, and the animation parks in Low Power Mode. Pin the pet to keep it in one spot, or switch speech and potty breaks off.
Everything Notchy does, in one app
- Fluid Dynamic Island animations on the Mac notch
- Command palette (⌃⌥K) — every action one keystroke away
- Knock — double-tap a modifier key to open the notch
- AI usage tracker (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot)
- Detach any tab into a menu-bar popover
- Now Playing music controls (Apple Music & Spotify)
- Time-synced karaoke lyrics under the notch
- Mac clipboard history shelf (password-manager safe)
- Searchable clipboard — filter by text, file name, or OCR'd words
- On-device OCR — copy a screenshot, get its text (Apple Vision)
- Window snapping — drag a window to the notch to tile it
- App Launcher — pin apps to the notch, open with one tap
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- Text snippets — TextExpander-style pastes from the ⌘K palette
- One-tap screen capture to clipboard + shelf
- Color eyedropper — sample any pixel, hex auto-copied
- System-wide mic mute for every meeting app at once
- Keystroke HUD for demos & screencasts (secure-input safe)
- Keyboard cleaning lock with countdown island (⌘⎋ unlocks)
- Menu-bar icon hiding — Bartender-style separator & chevron
- Live CPU / memory / network stats flyout
- Custom islands through the local developer API (off by default)
- iPhone-style call island — Answer/Decline FaceTime on the notch
- Notch Terminal — real VT100/xterm shell in a PTY, its own tab
- Camera Guard — alert (or block) when any app opens your camera
- Caps Lock HUD — brief island on every toggle
- Full Charge island with adjustable threshold + low-battery sound
- Alt HUD styles — edge-pinned bar or circular gauge off the notch
- Audio-reactive Now Playing visualizer (real FFT of system audio)
- Custom closed-notch idle animation — drop in your own Lottie JSON
- Drag-and-drop file drop shelf — persists across relaunches
- Zip & unzip files right from the shelf
- Image converter (HEIC, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF) + video → GIF
- Run Apple Shortcuts with one tap
- Screenshots auto-staged on the shelf, ready to drag
- Download finished alerts with Reveal in Finder
- USB drive mount island with one-tap Eject
- Apple Reminders quick capture & due list
- macOS Pomodoro notch timer & stopwatch — streaks + 7-day chart
- Resizable expanded panel (width & height, live preview)
- System HUDs (volume, brightness, battery)
- Audio output switcher (speakers, AirPods, monitor)
- AirPods connection manager & battery
- Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad battery + low-battery alerts
- Quick notes & Calendar widgets
- Camera Mirror (check your appearance)
- Keep Awake (caffeine toggle)
- Teleprompter (Cuely) for Zoom calls
- Focus-aware alerts & native haptic feedback
- Lock screen widgets & hide-the-notch mode
- 134 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple silicon
Desktop Pet for Mac — FAQ
Is there a desktop pet app for Mac?
Yes. Notchy includes one from version 1.0.178: a pixel pet that walks along your desktop and reacts to your Mac. Notchy runs on macOS 13 Ventura or later.
What does the pet react to?
CPU heat and thermal throttling, low battery, plugging in the charger, a running Pomodoro timer, video playing in a browser or player, and music from any app. The most urgent one wins — a hot or dying Mac outranks everything.
Which pets can I adopt?
23 pixel pets — cats and dogs, a capybara, a pygmy hippo, and (switch on New Companions) a rabbit, frog, fox, hamster, panda and more — each with a rare shiny variant. You can also adopt a Pomodoro mascot, name any of them, and back up and restore your pets. Since 1.0.198 you can also pick from 52 illustrated animals, people and robots.
Can I play games with my desktop pet?
Yes, since 1.0.197: turn on Pet Games for fetch across your desktop and a memory game on the pet's card. Pet Rides on Windows, Pet Visits Other Displays and Pet Bedtime add more behaviour — all off until you enable them.
Does a desktop pet slow down my Mac?
It's built not to. Its timers, motion sensor and animation stop whenever nobody can see it — display asleep or screen locked — and it stops animating in Low Power Mode.
Can I stop it from wandering?
Yes. Pin it and it stays where you put it, with no wandering or zoomies. Or turn the pet off in Settings.
Does it work on Intel Macs?
Yes — everything except tilt-to-play, which needs the motion sensor in Apple silicon Macs.
Is it free?
It comes with Notchy: a 7-day free trial of every feature, then $24.99 one-time for one Mac, updates included. No subscription or in-app purchase.